Speaking of Taunting the Tauntable… but I can relate. A times I’ve find myself crafting long emails/posts to explain my position, only to discover my position is pretty much unsupportable. On those occasions I like to take the time to fully backspace out the entire text. Provides a tad more negative reinforcement. Sometimes it’s better NOT said.

Probably at least 20% of what I think about writing or start writing or sometimes actually write with the intent of public dissemination gets deleted beforehand. (I rarely write about my bosses at work, since I usually don’t have anything nice to say.)(Have I mentioned I’m retiring? Yes, I’m retiring. I”m retiring!I’M RETIRING!! AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! [Snoopy dance])

But the best thing I never said was back in my Army basic training. After stepping into a hole during a night march, I had a knee swollen to the size of a cantaloupe, so I reported to the company HQ for Sick Call. Our Senior Drill Sergeant looked us over and said, “YOU BUNCH OF [long stream of invective, “candy-assed” being the most printable], I WAKE UP SICK EVERY MORNING AND I NEVER GO TO SICK CALL!”

The words that began to form in my mouth were:

“Gosh, Senior Drill Sergeant, if you didn’t drink a six-pack of beer and a pint of whiskey every night before bed, you might not wake up sick in the morning.”

The fact that I am alive today is proof that wisdom prevailed at the last second.

ooooooo, that’s just plain mean! almost as bad as when the boss says “i’ll be down to talk to you later” and you spend the whole day wondering what you got caught doing…er…i mean, wondering what he wants.

The Executive Committee of The Official Ghlaghghee Fan Club is always entertained (and amazed) at the poor powers of reasoning, speculation and imagination demonstrated by the Whatever readership.

It is beyond obvious that the posting Scalzi deleted was an attempt at a tribute to Her Shimmering Radiance. After a careful review, he realized it was utter tripe and not worthy of Her Least Attention. Not wanting to be embarrassed, or bring down the wrath of The Official Ghlaghghee Fan Club, or even – at the extreme – the Wrath Of Magnificent She Herself, he wisely restrained himself.

Good move, Scalzi.

The Executive Committee expects a correctly executed tribute to Her Glory will be very shortly forthcoming.

I do that all the time–usually when I’m getting set to post something really goddamn whiny. Then sometimes I post the whiny thing, realize it was whiny, and replace it with a cat macro. Everyone likes a cat macro.

And just for the record, I don’t want to know what you didn’t post. Because if you didn’t post it, it’s probably because it either (a) wasn’t worth posting or (b) wasn’t any of my business. If the former, thank you for contributing to my Whatever experience by ensuring the highest possible content value per post. If the latter, well, I dig the blog and dig your books, but I fully support the notion that having a public life doesn’t necessarily mean your life is public.